Wednesday, December 24, 2008

A Cattle Prod for Christmas

Normally, it would be time for a movie critique. If you've been following this blog for a while, you will have noticed that every third post is a movie or website review - it's part of my intricate numerological system that keeps the cosmic spheres of my world in harmony and me happy. However, I'm Bavarian, not Prussian, so I do break from my rigid routine on certain special occasions. Christmas is one of them.

Mind you, I haven't really celebrated Christmas as such since I was a child. I just have a nice dinner nowadays. Nonetheless, in the spirit of the season, I thought that this would be the perfect time for a gift to you, the readers. As a thank you for your interest this past year, for your comments and emails, and for generally making me feel that I'm doing a good job (actually, to be honest, I know that myself, but it's nice to see that it is being noticed). So here's your gift - if you are an agnostic like me, you can treat it as a worldly, secular offering among friends.

Instead of a movie review, you are getting a movie today: the next installment of the "Niki & Ludwig Show" (or "The Caning Saga", as some of you call it). In this newest morality tale, we learn what happens to naughty girls who zap people with cattle prods. Remember, they are for cattle, not for human beings. And especially not for tops.

(Click on "Free Download", wait for the counter to count down, then solve the captcha and download the file. The video uses the Xvid codec and MPEG Layer-3 for audio.)

We filmed the clip in the summer, when Niki (along with Amelia-Jane Rutherford aka Ariel Anderssen) came to Germany to work with SM-Circus and Loge Cologne (I wrote a behind-the-scenes report about the pet girl shoot here). It was only two weeks after the Ludwig's Comeuppance video had been recorded, and while the cane marks had faded by that time, the memory was as fresh as if it had been yesterday. In other words, I was itching to get some revenge on Niki ("to restore the natural order of things", as I like to describe it in cosmic harmony terms). I got a first taste of it with the Who has the best football team? clip, an idea of the Loge Cologne director which I gladly helped to realise.

Which would almost, under normal circumstances, have pacified me for the time being, at least in terms of swinging the cane. But by that point, Niki in her usual restraint had already decided to up the ante with a little stunt she pulled off in the morning - by using me as an unwitting test target for a cattle prod she found lying around on the set.

It was pretty funny, actually. While the crew are getting ready for the shoot and the rest of us are waiting around, I suddenly hear Niki's voice behind me: "Hold still." I turn my head around and see her touching my right leg with a pole of some sort. I look down at the device with polite, befuddled curiosity. One and a half seconds later, before I can even begin to wonder what it is, I feel a searing jolt of electricity and jump three feet in the air. After I land and get my wits together, I stare at Niki, and she looks back at me with an expression, it must be said in fairness, that seems like genuine surprise and embarassment. "Oh!" she says, wide-eyed. "Is it charged...?"

It was, and it produced quite an impressive shock, even through the jeans. Nasty little tool. Later, one of the guys gave Ariel a demonstration jolt on bare skin. She let out a blood-curdling shriek and collapsed to the floor, where she stayed for about a minute. Ariel subsequently declined to have the prod used on her during the Loge Cologne shoot. Niki declined to even submit to a one-off demonstration (wimp).

She did submit to a spanking and caning courtesy of yours truly the next morning at the hotel, though. After all, that little episode with the cattle prod deserved a proper response. All things considered, I think Niki got off pretty lightly with a quick OTK spanking and a dozen moderate strokes of the cane (13, actually). But she had already been abused non-stop the previous day, so I felt uncharacteristically lenient.

Even so, I managed to spring a minor "shock tactic" of my own on her. Quite unintended, too. I simply ordered Niki to strip off for the finale and, honestly, I didn't expect her to be much inconvenienced by it. I mean, she had been naked for most of the previous day's shoot. But this morning, she was utterly unprepared for it and made her objections loudly known. I like how she says "No!" six different times in six different tones of voice, from surprised to indignant to defiant. Didn't help her much, but it sure is fun to listen to.

It's a beautiful moment, I think, because it was neither planned nor acted. When Niki made me strip in the "Comeuppance" video, I feigned surprise, but it was part of the script (I think most of you can guess as much, so I'm not destroying too many illusions here). In this case, however, Niki's vocal "I'm not doing this!" reaction is absolutely real. Which, of course, left me no other choice but to insist all the more. Had she calmly said "Look, I don't really feel like getting naked this morning, can we please do it another way...?", I might have relented. But open, foot-stamping refusal is a challenge that cannot be ignored.

On a related note, the immortal line "All dress must down!" seems to be becoming a running gag on our show. But like Niki before me, I couldn't resist quoting it. If we keep it up, we'll have to start paying royalties to Maximilian Schubert.

You don't have to pay anything, though. It's a Christmas gift, another free spanking clip and you better well like it. In a couple of days, I'll do the movie review that normally would have gone up today, and that will be my last post of the year. I wish you all happy holidays, and I'll see you in 2009.

Adrian: Thanks for the compliment and for the jesting. We'll do our best to come up with more, more, more, even though a monthly rather than a daily dose is probably a more realistic aspiration...

To take the (other) joke seriously for a moment, because it touches on an interesting general question: as you know, I'm a self-described sadist and severity fetishist, and therefore a big fan of the Lupus treatment myself. But like everything else, it has its time and place - certain full-length films or similar special occasions that are worthy of that kind of gift (of suffering). In other words, if you are going for the Lupus treatment, you should make sure that the Lupus kind of perfectionism permeates all the other aspects of the work, too.

"Shock Tactics Revisited!" was fun to do and I think it's great for what it is, but it's a very different kind of mindset, obviously - just a light-hearted little hotel room romp. Had I thrashed Niki until she bleeds, it would not only have been artistically and emotionally out of place in this context, but also a "wasted sacrifice" on her part, really.

That said, maybe the two of us will some day get to collaborate on the kind of special project I mentioned above, and we'll see how much of a good, courageous sacrifical lamb she is then...

Thanks, Ludwig and Niki, lovely clip. My only disappointment was that the cattle prod action wasn't captured on film... For all we viewers know, you just made it up as an excuse to thrash that sweet, innocent thing.

Your insinuation is of course baseless, slanderous and deserving of a "proper reply" (read, thrashing) of its own. I pride myself in being unfailingly truthful with my readers (except for one time on April 1st, and I cleared that one up shortly thereafter). Besides, if I was really making this up, don't you think I would invent a less preposterous story than this one? The weirdness of it is your best clue that it really happened.

Actually, your accusation concerns Niki as much as it concerns me (after all, she would have been playing along with the fabrication). So it would merit an MF/F spanking, really. Consider yourself lucky that you live thousands of miles from either of us.

And on that note, a merry Christmas to you, too! *waves across the Atlantic*

You're such a sweetie, Indy. I appreciate the fact that SOMEONE stuck up for me. But alas, it's all true. And going by Ariel's reaction (and we all know the Fair One NEVER exaggerates *cough*), it did look a fairly serious shock.

You know, Indy is right on one point, it would have been fun to capture the cattle prod action on film - certainly the part with Ariel.

That howl of pain from the Fair One and her sinking to the floor was exquisite, and I don't think there was anything exaggerated about it (hey, there weren't even any cameras running). She was just genuinly shell-shocked. My inner sadist loved it. Good thing I was only standing about three feet away from her at the time. We didn't immortalise it on film, but at least I had a front row seat during the live show...

See, Ludwig, Niki understands my true nature better than you do! A less suspicious mind than yours might have picked up on my genuine distress that you had to suffer without having your heroic stoicism captured on film to be shared with your adoring fans.

As for Ariel's needing a camera running to produce an exaggerated reaction, well, I have my doubts...

Indy: True, I am suspicious by nature, but given the treachery that can reside in the hearts of men (and women), there are good reasons for this. Especially when dealing with you - after all this time that we've known each other, you still refuse to openly admit to your sadistic impulses. Instead, you insult my intelligence by passing them off as "genuine distress" about me.

At least Rachel is honest about why she would have loved to see the cattle prod action on film!

Rachel: Is it possible to be a tad sadist and also a tad masochist at the same time? Yes, I think so. Absolutely.

The longer answer would be a bit more complicated than that. I am not sure that one can really be a "full" sadist and a "full" masochist at the same time, with the whole mindset that goes along with it. I believe that people tend to be mostly one or the other, and that they retain this even when they switch. For instance, I would describe my mindset when switching (to the side of the bottom) as "auto-aggressive sadism" rather than true masochism.

But for all practical intents and purposes, I think we can say that someone can be a part of both worlds. I plan on writing a mini-essay about the question sometime, it should be pretty interesting.

Rachel, I was just winding Ludwig up. It's fun-- you should try it sometime! :-)

I actually agree with you. I'm not sure I'd exactly wish a cattle prod on anyone, but as long as Ludwig and Ariel were on the receiving end, anyway, it's too bad we didn't see it. *weg*

I was on a chat recently in which most of the people insisted that sadists were people who enjoyed hurting you more than you want to be hurt. That seemed unduly and unfairly restrictive to me, but I was clearly in the minority. My theory is that many of us have reservations about all the available spanking/BDSM terms, so we use the ones we mind the least and the differences are largely semantic.

As for being sadistic and masochistic at the same time, how could there possibly be a contradiction in that?! I love times when you can have your cake at eat it too....

Ludwig - It'd definitely be an interesting topic to write an essay on. I don't think I'm completely both at teh same time....I'm more 3/4 masochist and 1/4 sadist...as far as I know. Give me a shout when/if you write that essay...I'd be interested in reading it =)

I would definitely love to read that essay, too! I’m just a bit concerned that what you mean when talking about a “mini-essay”, Ludwig, is something many other people would call a doctor’s thesis… ;-) So, it might be a lot of work to write that essay. Maybe you could split it up into a series of small related topics like “Definitions of sadism/masochism”, “The mindset of sadists/masochists”, “Can people be sadists and masochists at the same time?” … I think that might lead to a lot of interesting discussions between your readers, too.

Indy: What kind of people have you been chatting with? Kinky people? I don’t share their definition of sadists and absolutely agree with you that their definition seems to be much too restrictive to me.

And I know I jump into the conversation in the middle (without even reading everything) but about 'people insisted that sadists were people who enjoyed hurting you more than you want to be hurt.'That doesn't make sense at all. Not by accident people call whole thing sado-maso. Sadist can't fully be a sadist and enjoy him/herself if what happens is too much for a masochist, and the other way around, masochist can't fully be a masochist and enjoy her/himself without knowing that the sadist wants to do what he/she is doing.

If someone hurts me more that I want to be hurt, he (or she) lacks some moral/ethical etc. inhibitions. It's not called sadism then at all.Oh, and I'm not talking about pushing limits/boundaries if that's what the scene is about but about clear abusing of trust. It loses the beauty and magic of psychology hidden behind sado-maso activities. (And spoils the fun ;) )

Indy: I agree that defining sadists as "people who want to hurt you more than you want to be hurt" is much too restrictive. I would use a more common and more general definition: someone who derives pleasure from inflicting pain on others. Or from inflicting humiliation or causing fear - it doesn't even have to be physical pain. Or from merely seeing it inflicted on others - you don't always or necessarily have to be directly involved. "Sadism" encompasses a pretty wide range of scenarios and interpersonal dynamics.

I would agree on one point with the people you were chatting with, though: I think that for a lot of sadists (myself included), a significant part (maybe even the main part) of the pleasure comes from pushing the victim's limits - in other words, from overstepping them, but only to a certain degree. Going to 105, 110 or maybe 120 percent, metaphorically speaking. The key lies in finding just the right space. *Violating* limits and utterly blowing them apart is not cool, obviously, and is no fun for the bottom or the top. But *pushing* them can be very exciting and very magical for both.

So there is a grain of truth in: "Sadists are people who want to hurt you more than you want to be hurt". It just needs a bit more differentiation. The framework of the scenario can (and should) be perfectly consensual, but depending on that framework and what was agreed on *beforehand*, what happens *during* a scenario can go well beyond the bottom's limits - and that is cool, really, as long as it was desired and he / she looks back on the experience as exciting and worthwhile, rather than traumatising.

In summary: no, sadism is not about violating limits, and defining it as such is indeed much too restrictive. But for many sadists, the real fun lies in *pushing* limits (within a consensual framework). Personally, I enjoy all kinds of scenarios, but I find myself being most obsessive about and most affectionate towards victims who want to push themselves...

(A happy new year to you, too! I deliberated long and hard about whether to write the blog in German or English.)

(The fact that there are few or no good German-language spanking blogs would have spoken in favour of the first option - there would have been a void to fill. On the other hand, you simply reach a bigger and more international audience in English. As I have good friends and penpals not only in Germany, but also in the UK, the United States etc., I chose that language.)

(For a while, I also toyed with the idea of writing a bilingual blog, but that would simply have been too much work - I have enough to do as it is.)

Indy: Not bad at all. Except for the "soll", where you should have written "sollte", there isn't anything wrong with it. And that was a minor mistake only. I think your German would easily be good enough to leave naughty comments, actually - come on, don't disappoint me now!

Perhaps you, not I, should coach Rachel for her German contest. The two of you live closer together (well, sort of...). And at the same time, you could start plotting your (doomed and hopeless) scheme to take me down.

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